Under this benign sky
by UnluckyAmulet
Summary: Twenty Truths of Andromeda Tonks. It's not easy to break out when you're always in the middle, but maybe being inbetween isn't always the hardest place. Drabble.


Disclainer:I do not own Harry Potter, blah blah.

Hello! So, recently I've hit a dry spell (ha, pun) in terms of fics, so I wrote this to get me out of my writing funk, plus I figured since I made a oneshot collection for Bellatrix and Narcissa, it was only fair Andromeda got one too.

Enjoy!

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><p>1. Andromeda had had always been considered the middle sister. Not just because of her age, but her brunette hair and mannerisms too.<p>

Then she married Ted Tonks, and suddenly, there was a gap between Bellatrix and Narcissa where Andromeda had been.

2. Bellatrix was the pride, Narcissa was the beauty and Andromeda was the brains. But when she met Ted, he made her feel like she was all three.

3. Her childhood bedroom was full of books. They lined every wall, spilled from shelves. Andromeda often wished that she could step into one of her stories and leave everyone else behind.

4. She envied Sirius a little- he was always so unafraid of saying whatever he wanted, regardless of the consequences. He always seemed to be shouting out his rebellion. Hers was a whisper nobody could hear.

5. The first hint of magic Andromeda ever displayed when she was seven years old- it was accidentally making the mouth of her porcelain doll to vanish. The memory of the doll's eyes silently reproaching her still causes a shudder to go down her spine.

6. There were occasions when people remarked how similar she looked to Bellatrix. However, nobody ever confused the two of them.

7. Even though they weren't exactly close, Andromeda missed her sisters. But a chasm lay between them that Andromeda didn't know how to close. It came as a shock to her that it was the death of Bellatrix that provided her and Narcissa a bridge on which to walk across.

8. She sometimes thinks about letting go- her daughter, husband, sister and son-in-law were all taken from her. But Teddy smiles at her and waves his fist in the air, and she knows that she can live, if it's for him.

9. Although she loved Ted more fiercely then she'd ever loved anybody, it still took her a long time to get used to her last name- "Tonks" was a very strange word to hear after a lifetime of being "Black."

10. Perhaps it's one of the drawbacks of being a metamorphmagus- but whenever her daughter shudders in disgust at her first name being spoken, Andromeda wishes that Nymphadora could see how pretty she (and her name) really was.

11. Andromeda has never admitted this to anybody, but the look on Lupin's face whenever Sirius' name pops up in the conversation makes her wonder if Nymphadora's marriage is all that it appears...

12. Her patronus is a bird.

13. When she first heard about Sirius being a murderer, she didn't want to believe that the only person in her childhood who seemed to understand her could commit genocide. To this day, she can't quite shake off the guilt that she ever doubted him.

14. Her solution to handling her differences from her family was to hide away. She wonders why Ted seemed to have the unique ability to know when she was pretending and not judge her for it.

15. When she was in her first year at Hogwarts, the Sorting Hat told her she didn't belong in Slytherin, but she asked to be put there all the same. When Sirius was sorted into Gryffindor, she felt inexplicably ashamed of herself.

16. There were times when she wondered if Regulus was really the doting son he pretended to be, but she could never quite bring herself to ask him. She isn't sure why.

17. Although she doesn't have the madness of Bellatrix or the apathy of Narcissa, there are occasions when Andromeda has an anger inside her that makes her wonder how different she is from her family, really.

18. Because of how she grew up, and how her daughter did, Andromeda always impressed one thing in particular on her grandchild: You don't have to pretend.

19. On warm nights, Andromeda likes to sit outside and gaze up at the sky. When the stars wink at her, she always feels strangely at peace. They seemed to say to her, _you are not alone._

20. When Teddy boldly announces that he is going to propose to Victoire Weasley, for a moment, Andromeda is hit by an overwhelming sense of both fear and loneliness- what is the point of her life if Teddy doesn't need her? But then he smiles at her and tells her that he can't wait for her to meet her first great-grandchild.

Andromeda smiles. She wouldn't miss something like that for the world.


End file.
